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Season IV
Season IV of the Blood Bowl League and Cup took place over the autumn and winter of 2013-14. The league commissioner was Crow. Division A was won by Outrageous Cretaceous and Division B by The Drakenhof Returned. Hellbug's Heroes won the Cup. The Crud! Cup was won by Blind Faith. Pre-Season Recruitment for the league was concluded in record time, with the open slots filling up in under 48 hours. There were two pre-season "friendly" matches. The first was something of a grudge match between veteran teams The Johnnys' Quest and the Red Sabres, while the second saw the rebooted Feets team face off against their former coach's new outfit Beyond Entropy. Story of the Season The league returned to two divisions for Season IV to reduce workload on the commissioner. Since thirteen teams signed up before the deadline, the bye week was reintroduced from Season II. The surviving team from the defunct Division C, the Bloodknights, joined Division A. As in previous seasons, Division B featured most of the returning teams from the previous season. The Red Sabres enjoyed their best-ever start to a season, going undefeated in their first four games to take a place near the head of Division B. Newcomers Rampant Professionalism also provided some early fireworks, as they defeated the heavily-fancied The Johnnys' Quest in the opening week. New Norse team Nature's Guardians, who had signed former Rampage! superstars Sessrumnir and Niflheimr, started strongly against the ogres of Blind Faith but were soon orphaned. Blind Faith themselves put in a surprisingly good performance in the early season, although fairly quickly tailed off. As is customary for a Necromantic team, The Shadow exploded out of the blocks, taking an early lead in Division A. Weeks 4 and 5 saw a change in fortune for some teams, as Undead outfit Drakenhof Returned started to assert themselves, poaching Count Luthor von Drakenborg from The Bloodknights during Star Player Week and using him to defeat the vampires in that week's game. After ending the Sabres' unbeaten streak, The Shadow also stalled, losing successively to Blind Faith and the dark horses of Feets Reloaded, who were starting to build a healthy points total after starting the season on a bye. Led by the steroid-addled Waity Darkbeard, Crooked Peak meanwhile began to string together a series of wins that would culminate in a 7-match undefeated streak. The rivalry between Waity and Outrageous Cretaceous skink Xl-li of Huatl over who would end as the season's leading rushing player dominated much of the middle season. As a counterpoint to their success, third-season veterans Hellbug's Heroes fell victim to the banana skin of Nature's Guardians, and also suffered the death of their star runner Brunbob, which would lead to a tough struggle for qualification. The new All-Division format proved a success, proving one of the most spectacular All-Star matches to date. Following the success of the previous season, the Snotling Derby also returned, although Derby winner Fredo D. Stefani was incapacitated in the All-Division match, his absence contributing to the Sabres' abysmal mid-season form. After the mid-season break, there followed a truly awful week of matches that led commissioner Crow to the brink of despair, with four draws and one of the two results being "ugly as hell". The Johnnys' Quest, absent that week on a bye, returned in Week 10 to show the rest of the league how it was done in a showpiece match with the Sabres. Their elven cousins at Rampant Professionalism, though, were starting to struggle to turn their passing game into definitive results against strong defences, losing to Crooked Peak, Hellbug's Heroes and Drakenhof Returned. As the final week approached, the top three in each division was effectively cemented: Outrageous Cretaceous, riding a superb season that saw them defeated only once, cruised to the top of Division A, followed by The Shadow and Feets Reloaded, while Drakenhof Returned, The Johnnys' Quest and Crooked Peak qualified relatively comfortably from Division B, leaving the rest of Division B scrambling for two wild card spots. Eventually, these were taken by Hellbug's Heroes and the Red Sabres, with Rampant Professionalism eliminated only on total team value. Blind Faith and Beyond Entropy, who had each had poor overall seasons, contested the Crud! Cup. The playoffs saw Outrageous Cretaceous drawn against the wild card Sabres, the only team to defeat them during the season. Drakenhof Returned also faced a tough wild card in Hellbug's Heroes. The Heroes duly dismantled the Undead, killing two players and seriously injuring two more, while the Cretaceous coach was left ruing his team's apparent inability to inflict casualties. Both divisional champions were eliminated in the first round. In a battle of the middleweights, Feets Reloaded beat The Shadow in overtime, but sustained yet more injuries and a fatality to leave some serious gaps in their roster. Meanwhile, in the biggest shock of the week, Crooked Peak managed to hold the free-scoring Johnnys to 1-1 and then beat them in overtime. A battered Feets Reloaded faced a Sabres team now coming off the back of four consecutive wins in the semifinal. Following a blistering passage of play in which the score was 2-2 by halftime, Crow realised he had supplied the wrong ruleset to the referee, and the match was restarted, the Feets holding their nerve to deny the Sabres on the last play of the game. In the other semifinal between Hellbug's Heroes and Crooked Peak, the Hellbug confidently predicted the match would see few casualties due to the good armour on both teams. Nuffle proved him wrong, as the Peak opened the scoring and seriously injured two of the Heroes' players. Ultimately though the Peak were unable to stifle the Heroes' offence, and were defeated 3-1, with the Heroes proceeding to their third consecutive cup final. In a high-quality final, the Heroes took an early lead and dismantled the Feets' defensive line. Despite some impressive passing plays that allowed the Feets to equalise in the second half, the Heroes pulled ahead again, not leaving the Feets enough time to get back into the match, and took the cup home 2-1. Teams The league reverted to two divisions for Season IV. Five teams returned from Season III - cup finalists Hellbug's Heroes, Division B winners The Johnnys' Quest, Division C winners The Bloodknights, cup quarterfinalists Outrageous Cretaceous and Crud Cup winners the Red Sabres. Division A: *Feets Reloaded *Beyond Entropy *Outrageous Cretaceous *The Bloodknights *The Shadow *Nature's Guardians *Blind Faith Division B: *Rampant Professionalism *Red Sabres *The Johnnys' Quest *Hellbug's Heroes *The Drakenhof Returned *Crooked Peak Results Colours: Green = Team win; Grey = Draw; Red = Team loss 'Final Tables' Playoffs Quarter-Finals Semi-Finals Final Events Star Player Action Week took place in Week 5 of the season. The All-Division Match took place in Week 8. Division A defeated Division B 4 - 3. After the success of the previous season, the Snotling Destruction Derby returned for a second season, also in Week 8. Fredo D. Stefani successfully defended his title. Player Swap Week took place in Week 11. Category:Seasons Category:Season IV